Threat Predictions 2012: Advertisers will Become Spammers
McAfee has released a list of security threat predictions for computer users in 2012.
Among those predictions are some that you may expect, including a growing trend toward cyberwar efforts, an increasing focus on mobile computing devices, hacktivism, and attacks on online currencies as well as strategies to place rogue certificates.
However, there were two predictions that stood out in particular. McAfee believes that there will be a trend of advertisers adopting techniques used by spammers. The company expects legal advertisers to be purchasing email lists, including those of companies that are going out of business. The resulting "legal” spam and "snowshoe spamming" are forecast to grow at a faster rate than illegal phishing and confidence scams, McAfee said.
2012 may also see an emergence of attacks on embedded hardware and chips that are an integral part of a larger computer system, for example in cars. McAfee said that proof-of-concept codes exploiting embedded systems will be more effective in 2012, with malware that is much more sophisticated to carry out hardware attacks and set the stage for long-term access to a system.
The security firm also noted that new security features in operating systems will force hackers to find other vulnerabilities outside the operating system. A possibility could be persistent malware in network cards, hard drives and even system BIOS (Basic Input Output System).
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Oh, good. I wasnt getting enough spam via all of the gaming companies getting hacked and letting these people sell my email address to everybody.
Is google a gaming company?
How is that a prediction...it's been happening for a while.
is spam really a problem anymore? I have a Gmail account since it was invite only, I haven't seen a single piece of spam in my inbox in the last eight months, and when one does get through it goes in my spam folder and I never get it again
How is that a prediction...it's been happening for a while.
The prediction is more about the increase of it happening. It is a more vulnerable area while security is improving in more traditional ways making this route more and more appealing.
is spam really a problem anymore? I have a Gmail account since it was invite only, I haven't seen a single piece of spam in my inbox in the last eight months, and when one does get through it goes in my spam folder and I never get it again
Spam is not a problem to you or me. However when it comes to email providers themselves it is. The majority of sent on the internet is spam, this is not a exaggeration there is more spam than legitimate emails. Just imagine all that bandwidth and that bandwidth isn't free.
Then there is also the $70 billion yearly in lost productivity (Figures from 2008) from employees while on the job going through the spam. It has a much larger impact than most realize because they are not personally effected in a financial manner due to it.
What I'm scared of is BIOS level attacks. How are we going survive those? Buy a new motherboard? No thanks.
Note to advertisers: the more you shove your shitty ad in my face, the more I'll boycott your product. Google Chrome's ad strategy is exactly why I STOPPED using Chrome and went back to Firefox. Because ads are annoying and waste my PC's resources and slow down the page loading a lot, I run an adblocker, and they're completely failed to get their point across. Man, if you JUST used plain text ads, I wouldn't block them. Shove them in my face and up my ass, and I will try my hardest to ignore you.
Bios attack is not a new thing. There are some very few old "viruses" that attack on a bios level, by the time when such things where fun codes. I encountered such thing back in 2005, poor coded, but it did a mess with the power switch on some Intel mobo. The fun is in the future.
McAffee is surprisingly on the money for a company infamous for its notoriously poor products. Though in all honesty, part of the issue here is that conventional phishing scams appear to have reached saturation levels: every single one of my emails has, for instance, already received an attempt to phish the credentials for the World of WarCraft accounts I don't have.
I can just hope that the legal environment can adapt to combat this. After all, we have Congress pushing laws left and right to restrict speech in the name of "combating piracy," yet where's the similar stuff for combating spam? It's GENUINELY costing everyone lots of money; as NuclearShadow says, on the network level bandwidth certainly ain't free.
Advertising had to evolve somehow.
2011 fact: Advertisers are spammers
Hacking into non PC (Max, Win or whatever) systems is going to be a dangerous path.
It is one thing to mess with a user's machine, data or hardware, but once you start 'hacking' industrial devices or a car's computer you start playing with people's lives.
As sad -and controversial- as it sounds, but it will take some high profile fatalities resulting from such hacks that we take these criminals off the playing field.
2012 Fact: McAfee will continue losing its relevance.
is spam really a problem anymore? I have a Gmail account since it was invite only, I haven't seen a single piece of spam in my inbox in the last eight months, and when one does get through it goes in my spam folder and I never get it again
Start using that e-mail address to post to usenet. I can say with high probability that you will get spammed.
IMHO, spam is not about having an e-mail account at any particular provider. It is about what you do with that e-mail address. There are places where you definitely do not want to post your e-mail address.
I have never clicked on an ad. If I want something I will do a google search for it.
We consider the Adverdisor's as spammers because from the day one ,nobody is gonna a listen or give chance to the Advertisors words patiently.